All Over Albany

Items tagged with 'Glens Falls'

The oil painting above is "Still Life with Basket of Fruit," by an unidentified artist, 1860-1880, courtesy of the Barbara L. Gordon Collection.

Now is a good time of year to take a drive north, and hey, look, the Hyde Collection has a new exhibit opening: The traveling show A Shared Legacy: Folk Art in America opens this weekend. It includes more than 60 works of art created between 1800 and 1925. Blurbage:

A Shared Legacy celebrates art rooted in personal and cultural identity, made by artists who were either self-taught or had received minimal formal training. Created for ordinary people rather than society's upper classes, folk art was the prevalent art form in the United States for more than a century.

A Shared Legacy showcases the extraordinary imagination and powerful design of regional folk artists, some acclaimed in their day and many now unknown. The exhibited works were made primarily in New England, the mid-Atlantic states, and the Midwest. They include a range of paintings (portraiture, still life, and landscape), sculpture, furniture, and trade signs. Among the paintings are iconic works by Edward Hicks and Ammi Phillips. Exuberantly painted furniture and decorated manuscripts from German-American communities are exhibition highlights.

The exhibit opens to the general public on Sunday, which also happens to be a "second Sunday" free admission day.

The Feibes & Schmitt Gallery is the result of a donation made last year from Werner Feibes and his late partner, James Schmitt, who gave the Museum their Modern and Contemporary art collection valued at more than $10 million, and a $1 million leadership donation to build the 1,500-square-foot exhibition space. The collection establishes the Museum as a regional hub for Modern and Contemporary art, and greatly increases its educational and programming opportunities. ...

The celebration June 10 also marks the opening of the Feibes & Schmitt Gallery's inaugural exhibition, To Distribute and Multiply: The Feibes & Schmitt Gift, which includes more than forty works from the collection, representing some of the twentieth century's most influential artists, such as Jean (Hans) Arp, Josef Albers, Ilya Bolotowsky, Keith Haring, Grace Hartigan, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Man Ray, Louise Nevelson, Pablo Picasso, George Rickey, Bridget Riley, and Andy Warhol, among others.

The Hyde Collection formally announced this week that it received a gift of art and cash totaling more than $11 million from Werner Feibes of Schenectady. The museum says it's largest donation since donated her home and artwork to establish the museum in Glens Falls in 1952. And it says it's planning to use the money and art to open a new gallery for modern and contemporary art next summer.

From the press release:

For more than four decades, Werner Feibes and the late James Schmitt built a world-class art collection that aligned with their personal tastes and interest in non-objective art, Pop art, abstract art, and Minimalism. Building on Mr. Feibes' previous donation of 55 Modern and Contemporary works to The Hyde in 2015, the bequest includes the remainder of the collection (105 works). Combined, the Feibes and Schmitt gift more than doubles The Hyde's holdings of Modern and Contemporary art, situating the Museum as a regional hub for Post-war art. ...

Mr. Feibes and Mr. Schmitt began collecting in the 1950s. Their collection of paintings, drawings, prints, mixed media, and sculpture includes work from some of the best known and most respected artists of the twentieth century, including Josef Albers, Jean Arp, Grace Hartigan, Keith Haring, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Robert Motherwell, George Rickey, Louise Nevelson, Bridget Riley, Robert Rauschenberg, and David Smith.

In the 1960s, leaving behind the beloved storytelling scenes that appeared on the covers and pages of the nation's prominent periodicals, Rockwell threw himself into a new genre--the documentation of deeply felt social issues.

In 1963, after ending his 47 year association with The Saturday Evening Post, Rockwell began work for the reportorial magazine Look with a true sense of purpose. He invited consideration of important social issues including the Space Race, depicting the moon landing before and after it actually happened. His 1964 painting, The Problem We All Live With, gently presents an assertion on moral decency. This first assignment for Look magazine was an illustration of a six-year-old African-American schoolgirl being escorted by four U.S. marshals to her first day at an all-white school in New Orleans. In 1965, Rockwell illustrated the murder of civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and in 1967, he chose children, once again, to illustrate desegregation, this time in the nation's suburbs.

The exhibit includes 21 illustrations and magazine covers created by Rockwell during the decade. It'll be on display through April 3.

Speaking of Norman Rockwell...
As you might know already, the Norman Rockwell Museum is just over the Massachusetts border in Stockbridge. (Rockwell lived in Stockbridge.) It's open year round, seven days a week.

More than any other medium, drawing was essential to Andy Warhol's creative output. This exhibition, organized by The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, offers works created during on of the most prolific periods of his life employing a confident and fluid contour line to depict some of the same motifs of his iconic paintings: celebrity portraits, flowers, and ads. Many of the drawings in this exhibition are on view to the public for the first time.

Opening night for the exhibit is this Saturday, June 20 from 6:30-8 pm. It's $30 per person and includes hors d'oeurves, wine, and beer.

The exhibit will be open as part of general museum admission on Sunday. It will be on display through September 27.

Glens Falls seems to be going through a bit of a culinary renaissance, with many new eateries staking out a spot in the last few years. Chefs with regional ties have come back to assert their influence on the dining scene, and longtime favorites continue to flourish with a revitalization of the downtown area.

And with much to be done between meals -- both in town and farther afield in the nearby Adirondacks -- there's no doubt you could spend a full day in and around Glens Falls.

For much of his early adulthood, Adams was torn between a career as a concert pianist versus one in photography; later, he famously likened the photographic negative to a musical score, and the print to the performance. Yet most museum goers are only familiar with the heroic, high- gloss, high-contrast prints that Adams manufactured to order in the 1970s-80s, coinciding with the emergence of the first retail galleries devoted to photography; as performances, these later prints were akin to "brass bands." Much less familiar are the intimate prints, rich in the middle tones - the "chamber music" - that Adams crafted earlier in his career. The present show focuses on the masterful small-scale prints made by Adams from the 1920s into the 1950s. Already in this time period there is quite an evolution of printing style, from the soft-focus, warm-toned, painterly "Parmelian prints" of the 1920s; through the f/64 school of sharp-focused photography that he co-founded with Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham in the 1930s; and, after the War, towards a cooler, higher-contrast printmaking approach.

The Adams exhibit opens Saturday (January 25) The Hyde Collection and runs through April 20.

A visit to the Hyde + a stop at the new Rare Earth Wine Bar in Glens Falls could be a nice day trip.

The Hyde Collection, in association with the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, is organizing a first-of-its-kind exhibition that will closely examine the extraordinary body of work created by O'Keeffe of and at Lake George. From 1918 until the mid 1930s, O'Keeffe (1887-1986) spent part of the year at Alfred Stieglitz's family estate, a thirty-six acre property situated just north of Lake George village in the southern basin of the lake. The exhibition will present a selection of fifty-eight paintings from both public and private collections.

Modern Nature: Georgia O'Keeffe and Lake George is said to include "full range of works by the artist" -- from "magnified botanical compositions of flowers and vegetables, to a group of remarkable still lifes of apples and pears" to architectural subjects and Lake George panoramas.

The exhibit will be at the Hyde Collection June 15-September 15. The museum is expecting crowds -- so it's offering advance tickets. They're $12.

The paper is using a model similar to the one used by the New York Times. Readers will get 15 free "page views" (we wonder if that's page views or stories) per month. After that, you'll need a paid subscription -- "non-subscribers will not be able to click on headlines to view stories." The paper is charging print subscribers $1.95 per month for online access -- it will be $6.50 per month readers for everyone else.

The highest profile pay wall experiment has been New York Times, which appears to be doing OK with it. The Boston Globe has been experimenting with one. The Wall Street Journal has charged for access for what seems like forever now. And, of course, locally the Daily Gazette also has a pay wall (yes, we know, you don't like it when we link to their stories). [CJR]

Her contestant video is embedded after the jump (because it autoplays, that's a screengrab above). And. It. Is. Awesome. It's set up like she's the guest on some sort of celebrity talk show. And the host has a puppet head.

Hajek plays the interview more or less straight, coming up with New York answers for most of the host's questions. (She kind of has an Alison Brie-like quality about her.) It's quite the departure from the other contestant videos (for example: Miss Clifton Park).

There seems to be a very high likelihood that Hajek is generally awesome. She's a member of the Ravacon Collective, which made the video. (Among Ravacon's other work: moving images that Phantogram used for its concerts.) And, according to her info on Facebook, she's a literature major at SUNY-Purchase (while also pursuing acting), and went to the Waldorf School in Saratoga.

The city of Albany was ranked 295th on this year's list -- that's up (or, in reference to crime, down) from #317 in the 2010 rankings. And the crime score compiled by CQ for the city dropped from 86.77 to 68.06.

CQ Press also ranks metropolitan areas. The Albany-Schenectady-Troy metro is #77 on this year's rankings -- it was #73 on last year's list. It's still well below the national average.

The Glens Falls metro ranked #8 this year, after topping the rankings last year.

If you're curious about the methodology behind these rankings -- and the strong criticism of them -- here's a little more...

Jimmer Fredette was selected with the 10th pick in the NBA draft by the Milwaukee Bucks -- but he's headed to the Sacramento Kings via a trade.

Sacramento's roster is thin at the guard position, so Jimmer should have opportunity. The Kings have a few very talented young players -- notably guard Tyreke Evans -- who also have reputations for being... difficult. So it could all be interesting.

The highest I have seen him in mock drafts is No. 7 to Sacramento, which would be a disaster on several levels. He would presumably take Tyreke Evans' job at point guard, which would probably tick off Evans; Evans isn't really a point guard, but neither is Fredette. Evans would move to shooting guard. If you think he and temperamental center DeMarcus Cousins would be happy with shot-happy Jimmer as their shooting guard, you're nuts. Plus the team might move, and Fredette would be saddled with two savior labels -- top-10 pick, and likable guy on an unlikable team. No. Please: No.

A high-five to the people at Trampoline Design who spotted this tribute to Jimmer Fredette in an alley in Glens Falls. As they noted on Twitter: "When the Boogeyman goes to sleep, he checks the closet for Jimmer Fredette." (Incidentally, that's also the answer to the question, "What do Jimmer Fredette and Chuck Norris have in common?")

Jimmer Fredette -- Glens Falls native, a leading candidate player of the year in college basketball, folk hero -- plays in the NCAA tournament tonight. His #3 seeded BYU team takes on #14 seed Wofford at 7:15 pm on CBS. Update: BYU won 74-66 to advance.

Here are 28.5 facts about Jimmer -- one for each of the 28.5 points per game he's averaged this year. (And we're not even counting that he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week.)

Three of those points came on a 40-foot shot at the buzzer before halftime (video above). The best part about that shot? The way he just sort of nonchalantly walks away, like "What? You thought I would miss?"

A few weeks ago against Buffalo, Fredette scored just 6 points in the first half -- and then dropped 28 in the second half. The performance prompted Buffalo's coach to call Fredette "a bad dude." [Buffalo News]

3) Why Glens Falls? Why not Lake George or Saratoga?
Saratoga and Lake George are for rich people and tourists. Glens Falls has the air of the common man without the questionable odor the tourists seem to bring.

Brandon didn't mention whether this air would arrive hot, or you'd have to heat it up yourself.

We hadn't been to Glens Falls in quite a while, but we'd been hearing a lot about the big changes downtown. So this week we checked it out, and you know what -- it's very different than the place we remember.

After the jump, a few things to check out if you're headed up that way for the balloon festival. Or anytime.

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